DEMOCRACY: Lay your hammer down

As the November U.S. presidential elections approach, Dr Edwin J. Feulner asks why America has seen a 40-year decline in voter participation in national elections, and what must be done to reverse it.

In 1969 a Stanford University psychologist named Philip Zimbardo set up an experiment. He arranged for two cars to be abandoned - one on the mean streets of the Bronx, New York; the other in an affluent neighbourhood near Stanford in Palo Alto, California. The licence plates had been removed, and the hoods were left open. Zimbardo wanted to see what would happen to the cars.

In the Bronx, he soon found out. Ten minutes after the car was abandoned, people began stealing parts from it. Within three days the car was stripped. When there was nothing useful left to take, people smashed windows and ripped out upholstery, until the car was trashed.

In Palo Alto, something quite different happened: nothing. For more than a week the car sat there unmolested. Zimbardo was puzzled, but he had a hunch about human nature. To test it, he went out and, in full view of everyone, took a sledge-hammer and smashed part of the car.

Soon, passers-by were taking turns with the hammer, delivering blow after satisfying blow. Within a few hours, the vehicle was resting on its roof, demolished.

Now at this point, you might be wondering what the relevance is of all this?

Among the scholars who took note of Zimbardo's experiment were two criminologists, James Q. Wilson, now Ronald Reagan Professor at Pepperdine University, and George Kelling. The experiment gave rise to their "broken windows" theory of crime, which is illustrated by a common experience: When a broken window in a building is left unrepaired, the rest of the windows are soon broken by vandals.

But why is this? Aside from the fact that it's fun to break windows, why does the broken window invite further vandalism? Wilson and Kelling say it's because the broken window sends a signal that no one is in charge here, that breaking more windows costs nothing, that it has no undesirable consequences.

The broken window is their metaphor for a whole host of ways that behavioural norms can break down in a community. If one person scrawls graffiti on a wall, others will soon be at it with their spray cans. If one aggressive panhandler begins working a block, others will soon follow.

In short, once people begin disregarding the norms that keep order in a community, both order and community unravel, sometimes with astonishing speed.

Police in big cities have dramatically cut crime rates by applying this theory. Rather than concentrate on felonies such as robbery and assault, they aggressively enforce laws against relatively minor offences - graffiti, public drinking, aggressively begging for money, littering.

When order is visibly restored at that level, the environment signals: This is a community where behaviour does have consequences. If you can't get away with jumping a turnstile into the subway, you'd better not try armed robbery.

Now all this is a preface. My topic is not crime on city streets, rather I want to speak about incivility in the marketplace of ideas. The broken windows theory is what links the two.

What we're seeing in the marketplace of ideas today is a disturbing growth of incivility that follows and confirms the broken windows theory. Alas, this breakdown of civil norms is not a failing of either the political left or the right exclusively. It spreads across the political spectrum from one end to the other.

A few examples:

A liberal writes a book calling Rush Limbaugh a "big fat idiot". A conservative writes a book calling liberals "useful idiots".

A liberal writes a book titled The Lies of George W. Bush. A conservative writes a book subtitled Liberal Lies about the American Right.

Those few examples - and unfortunately there are many, many more - come from elites in the marketplace of ideas. All are highly educated people who write nationally syndicated columns, publish best-selling books, and are hot tickets on radio and television talk shows.

Further down the food chain, lesser lights take up smaller hammers, but they commit even more degrading incivilities. The Internet, with its easy access and worldwide reach, is a breeding ground for web sites with names like Bushbodycount.com and Toostupidtobepresident.com.

This is how the broken windows theory plays out in the marketplace of ideas. If you want to see it working in real time, try the following: Log on to America On Line (AOL), and go to one of the live chat-rooms reserved for political chat. Someone will post a civil comment on some political topic. Almost immediately, someone else will swing the verbal hammer of incivility, and from there the chat degrades into a food fight, with invective and insult as the main course.

This illustrates the first aspect of the broken-windows theory, which we saw with the car in Palo Alto. Once someone wields the hammer - once the incivility starts - others will take it as an invitation to join in, and pretty soon there's no limit to the incivility.

Now if you watch closely in that chat room, you'll see something else happening. Watch the screen names of people who make civil comments. Some - a few - will join in the food fight. But most will log off. Their screen names just disappear. They leave because the atmosphere has turned hostile to anything approaching a civil exchange or a real dialogue.

This illustrates the second aspect of the broken windows theory: Once the insults begin flying, many will opt out. Wilson and Kelling describe this response when the visible signs of order deteriorate in a neighbourhood:

"Many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly. They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps. Don't get involved. For some residents, this growing atomisation will matter little . . . But it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local attachments . . . ; for them, the neighbourhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet."

The chat room shows us that a similar response occurs when civility breaks down in the marketplace of ideas. Many people withdraw and tune out, regardless of whether the incivility occurs in a chat room, on a talk show, in a newspaper column, in political campaign ads, or on the floor of the Congress.

This is the real danger of incivility. Our free, self-governing society requires an open exchange of ideas, which in turn requires a certain level of civility rooted in mutual respect for each other's opinions and viewpoints.

What we see today, I am afraid, is an accelerating competition between the left and the right to see which side can inflict the most damage with the hammer of incivility. Increasingly, those who take part in public debates appear to be exchanging ideas when, in fact, they are trading insults: idiot, liar, moron, traitor.

Earlier this week I was in London and attended a dinner honouring Lady Margaret Thatcher on the 25th anniversary of her accession to the prime ministership of Great Britain. She was a great political leader and has always been a model of civility.

If you want to grasp the nature of civility, try to imagine Lady Thatcher calling someone a "big fat idiot." You will instantly understand that civility isn't an accessory one can put on or take off like a scarf. It is inseparable from the character of great leaders.

I also happen to believe that our President, George W. Bush, is a model of civil discourse, and I only wish that everyone else in the political arena would take a lesson from his example.

Incivility is not a social blunder to be compared with using the wrong fork. Rather, it betrays a defect of character. Incivility is dangerous graffiti, regardless of whether it is spray-painted on a subway car, or embossed on the title page of a book. The broken-windows theory shows us the dangers in both cases.

But those cases aren't parallel in every way. There is an important difference. When behavioural norms break down in a community, police can restore order. But when civility breaks down in the marketplace of ideas, the law is powerless to set things right.

And properly so. Our right to speak freely - and to speak with incivility, if we choose - is guaranteed by those five glorious words in the US First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law . . . "

Need for civility

And yet, the need for civility has never been greater. Our nation is divided as never before between the left and the right. We are at loggerheads on profoundly important political and social questions. Civilisation itself is under barbaric attack from without.

Sadly, too many us are not rising to these challenges as a democratic people. On the contrary, we've seen a 40-year decline in voter participation in national elections. In the last two presidential elections, fewer than half of eligible voters even bothered to vote.

Rather than helping to reverse this decline, the rising chorus of incivility is driving out citizens of honest intent and encouraging those who trade in jeering and mockery.

If we are to prevail as a free, self-governing people, we must first govern our tongues and our pens. Restoring civility to public discourse is not an option. It is a necessity.

Who will begin the restoration of civility?

Dr Edwin J. Feulner is president of America's prestigious Heritage Foundation. This is an edited version of his commencement address at Hillsdale College, Michigan, on May 8, 2004, which first appeared in Imprimis.